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Back when I was still writing speeches and giving policy advice to naïve candidates foolish enough to listen to me, I once told a young, first-time congressional candidate who was depressed about all the negative attacks coming his way that you can tell a lot about a man by the enemies he attracts. Such was the case with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Back in the winter, Republicans were perfectly happy to let the sequester happen. They hewed to their math-challenged belief that Washington could slash the budget deficit by taking an axe to entitlement programs, preserving or hiking defense spending, lowering tax rates, and foregoing any new revenue. And if the Obama administration refused to go that route, Republicans were fine to let the sequester kick in on March 1 - as mandated by the 2011 deal between the parties.

Since incumbent Republicans are in favor of gay marriage, it's clear-gays are out. Recently Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) have endorsed marriage equality. LGBTs are no longer that group Republicans can win elections by promising to keep them away from us. The GOP swore to protect marriage and on their watch the altar was altered anyway. Now the party of Lincoln is gay-friendly, or at least not as successfully gay-hostile.

Forget the robin. Ignore the tulips. Do not let the Easter Bunny, hummingbirds or awakening bears hoodwink you. The first baseball thrown in anger is the true harbinger of spring and calendar alarm for the lazy discard of the heavy encumbrances of winter. Ditch the parka and pull out the windbreaker. Stash the boots and burn the long underwear. Trust me. Burn the long underwear.

Traditionally it's the Hollywood celebrities with a cause who seem way out there, and the pundits discussing their verbal excesses who seem more thoughtful. Not so in the rage fest between Canadian-born star Jim Carrey and talk-show-model-born Fox News.

Sadly, bureaucracy is a time-honored tradition in the United States government, but perhaps no greater bureaucratic juggernaut exists today than the Veteran's Administration (VA) run by the Obama Administration.

The Ohio state auditor is investigating the practice of "scrubbing," or dropping students from attendance rolls so they don't count against test scores. The former El Paso superintendent is in prison for using truant officers to encourage at-risk students to drop out. Other testing scandals have popped up in Mobile, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, and East St. Louis, Illinois. And everywhere USA Today looked in a 2011 investigation, they discovered statistically improbable aberrations in test scores, identifying 1,610 examples of anomalies that an Arizona State University professor compared to "a weight-loss clinic where you lose 100 ...

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Last week President Obama sent Congress legislation to authorize him to use force against ISIS "and associated persons and forces" anywhere in the world for the next three years. This is a blank check for the president to start as many new wars as he wishes, and it appears Congress will go along with this dangerous and costly scheme.

What would it look like if politics stopped at the water's edge? It wouldn't look like the mess that John Boehner created by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a session of Congress on March 3. By allowing Netanyahu to stage what is effectively a campaign event in the U.S. Capitol, congressional Republicans have not only damaged our relations with Israel but threatened our diplomatic negotiations with Iran.

It's kind of sad being forced to watch the death struggle of these modern-day dinosaurs. Responsible parents should keep their kids from peering over the Plexiglas railing into the tar pits below to see the huge lumbering antediluvian beasts frenziedly dig themselves deeper into the sticky morass that is gay marriage. Not a sight for the queasy or squeamish.